


Proud

by Icechild



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hugging, Hurt Luke Skywalker, Isolation, Jedi Luke Skywalker, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28510263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icechild/pseuds/Icechild
Summary: Luke was trying his best, he really was. But he felt like that wasn't enough. He didn't know enough, and he never could. But maybe things could be okay. After all the Force watches out for its children.Or.Luke has a heart to heart with his father's ghost.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Luke Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	Proud

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for the Glorious Tiktoker @danielleafenske I saw the video and I knew I had to write something for it it was just too good not to. If anyone out there has a TikTok please go check her out. Her Anakin cosplay is amazing and all the videos are pure perfection.

Luke had worked hard on everything he built around him. His temple was nearing completion, soon he’d be able to find young Force sensitives and bring them in for training. He’d studied every text he could find. Read every book from start to finish. Including a book that he discovered had been passed down a line of Jedi, passed master to padawan and even belonged to his father at one point. Reading that book, hearing his voice and seeing his words on those pages. It brought a sense of sorrow to him that he thought he wouldn’t have by simply reading. He read the notes in the margins, read the stories of the lives they all must have had. He read how his father’s padawan talked about him. How they joked in the notes with each other. He read it all.

And by the end of it there was only pain filling the hole in his heart. He laid the book down on the stand next to his bed. It hurt to think how that was the closest he would really get to knowing how it all was before. To knowing who they all were before Sidious got his hands on them all. He never had the chance to even know some of the people who would have been his family had the Sith not robbed that of him. He forgave his father. He loved his father. But he wasn’t sure he could ever forgive Sidious. 

“Luke?”

His head shot up at the soft voice. He’d only ever heard it once before, on the second death star, while his father died in his arms. Looking at him now, as he was before, compiled with everything that he had recently been thinking about nearly made tears spring to his eyes. He tried to push it down, the code playing in his head over and over like a beating.

_ There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no emotion. _

He felt the phantom touch on his shoulder, carried over by the Force with a false warmth. He lifted his head to meet his father’s kind and worried eyes. The same blue ones that he had brought back from the yellow that had taken them for so long. He failed in that moment to keep the tears at bay. Felt their heat fill his eyes and drip down his cheeks in heavy drops. His father’s ghost sat beside him on the bed, a hand on Luke’s shoulder in a way of comfort.

“Luke?” He tried again. “Tell me what’s wrong. What’s bothering you?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

His voice broke on the last word. Luke had never been very good at hiding what he was feeling. Sometimes he looked back at the code and thought about Yoda, even Ben. Yoda had refused to train him, Ben looked at him like he was seeing a ghost. He knew they both saw Anakin when they looked at him. He didn’t want to fail them. 

“Oh Luke..” 

His father’s voice was soft when he spoke. Like he could feel the crippling pain that Luke was in. Maybe he could. Maybe the Force was letting him see his son and how much of a failure he was being. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t apologize for feeling. Feelings were not banned.”

He huffed a weak laugh at that.

“The code says otherwise.”

“The code needs to be explained to you then little one.”

Luke leveled him with a look. Despite the tear tracks on his cheeks there was still a heat in his eyes that could rival that of the twin suns they both grew up on. 

“There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge, there is no passion there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.”

“I am well aware of the Jedi code my son.”

“But you fell anyway.”

Luke realized what he said after it was too late. He always knew there was good in his Father. And he’d come back to the light in the end. If he hadn’t then Luke would have died on that death star with them both when it exploded. He’d come back despite everyone saying it was impossible. And yet here Luke was, holding his fall over his head.

“Father I-”

“I know. It’s alright. You aren’t wrong. Emotion is not a weakness, to be a Jedi only means you do not let your emotions control you. You still feel. Love is what brought me back, your heart makes you strong. If I had let others in perhaps things would have gone differently.”

Luke nodded along to the explanation. It made sense. He had pieced together that his father’s fall had to do with him believing the Jedi to be flawed. It almost made him laugh in hysteria that he and his father had thought the same thing of the code. Understood it the same way. And now his father’s ghost was telling him what it really meant. He’d need to make sure his students understood it properly. He felt the phantom push of a shoulder against his. Taking a deep breath he started his question.

“Father, could you-”

He hesitated. Amongst the other things he knew his father’s fall also tied in with his and Leia’s birth as well as their mother’s death. He knew who she was from the recording of their wedding R2 kept. But he didn’t know anything about her. He wanted to know more. Even if it was painful for both of them.

“Could you tell me about my mother?”

He expected the sadness that flickered through his father’s eyes but he hadn’t expected the smile that came with it.

“Of course.” 

The smile stayed on his face but the sadness just grew. Like he was remembering all the things from his past that came with just a mention of her. His father’s voice was faint when he spoke again.

“Where to start...”

“At the beginning...I want to know everything.”

He just wanted to know them. To have an answer and some sort of tale to tell when people asked who his parents were. He wanted to be able to hold onto the thoughts of what they would do. To be able to pick out certain traits he and Leia had and figure out which parent they came from. He wanted to know everything. When he spoke again there was an air of remembrance in his father’s tone.

“She was beautiful. Like an angel the deep space pilots would talk about on Tatooine.”

Anakin smiled at his comparison. He remembered the first time he met the love of his life. He remembered his first words to her were asking if she was an angel. The smile that lit her face after being the brightest thing he’d seen in the world. 

“She was so brave.”

He remembered her determination on Geonosis when the Clone Wars first started. Her reference to his tales of aggressive negotiations while they were on the battlefield. Or how she talked about fixing up their child’s room with such light despite the danger they were both in if word got out. 

“Always fighting for those who couldn’t.”

He remembered her time as queen. How he hadn’t even known of what all she was working for, that she could still smile with her people under threat. That she would do everything in her power to help them and protect them. 

“Fearless.”

His title in the war had been the Hero With No Fear but if anyone deserved that title it was Padme. She was the one who held no fear in revealing herself to the gungans in order to gain their help. She knew the risks her love took and she did it anyway. Her love for her people. Her love for  _ him. _ Looking at Luke he saw that same love in his eyes. 

“She held her own. The most powerful senator in all the Republic.”

There had been so many times that Anakin had snuck to the senate building to watch her. He never had an interest in politics but watching Padme speak to all of those other senators, to fight for what she believed in and what she felt was right. She was the strongest person he knew. 

“And she never gave up.”

He knew Luke heard how his voice softened and filled with pain when he said it. He knew his son would know there was more there than he was telling but he couldn’t help it. When he’d joined the force he’d gotten to see Obi-wan again. He’d been able to apologize for everything to be held by his only Master who truly cared for him. Obi-wan had told him what her last words were. He’d told him she died defending him. He knew that Luke had nearly done the same. 

He looked to his son’s eyes again. His own tears welling to match his sons and for a brief moment he saw all the similarities between his face and hers. They had the same nose, the same chin. His eyes were the same colors as Luke’s but the kindness and warmth their son held there was all her. Luke had never given up on him. He’d fought for him, defended him. Even when it would have cost him his life. 

“She would be proud of you.”

Luke’s reaction was immediate. Fresh tears sprung into his eyes. Anakin’s face reflected his own almost perfectly. A pale blue hand reaching to wipe tears from his cheek.

“ _ I’m  _ proud of you.”

He couldn’t hold it anymore. The sob tore itself from Luke’s throat like a beast that had been trapped. He couldn’t explain the feeling that bloomed through his heart hearing his father say that. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear that. To know that his Mother would have been proud of him. That his father  _ was  _ proud of him. He hadn’t realized how much he needed that support. He hid his face in his hands, attempting to scrub away the tears even as they fell. He felt his father’s presence wrap around him in an attempt at a hug. It only made the tears come stronger. 

“I love you Luke. Your mother loved you too. Even before you were born.”

Luke wanted nothing more than to be able to wrap his arms around his father right then. He just wanted to feel the hug he would have likely gotten all the time if things had been different. He wanted to feel the heat from his father’s skin, he wanted to hear his heartbeat under his ear. But that couldn’t happen. Because he’d died with the empire. 

“We always fought over you two. I thought our child would be a girl. She was convinced the baby was a boy. I’m so glad we were both right.”

Luke could hear the wetness in his father’s voice. He knew if this was a real hug, if he wasn’t sitting with, hugging and talking to a ghost he would be able to feel his father’s tears hitting his shoulder. Instead he just had to accept their presences wrapped together through the Force. He’d kept Vader’s crystal, tied it to a cord and kept it in the top drawer of the stand next to his bed. To keep him close. 

“Luke..”

“I love you Father.”

They stayed like that until they couldn’t anymore. And despite the loss of his Father being there to speak to he could still feel his presence through the crystal in his drawer. Luke wiped his tears away the rest of the way and grabbed it. The red crystal still echoed with songs of pain and suffering but he tied the cord around his throat nonetheless. He could do this. He could rebuild the order. He wasn’t alone. He was never alone.

The next time Luke thought anything along those lines again was years later. He was trying to bring his nephew back from the dark. The dark that he had pushed him down in a fit of his own fear. He’d built his order and he had been the cause for it to burn to the ground. Like a Skywalker would always be the death of the order. He sat on the rock, using everything he could to try to fix what he broke. He’d make his parents proud. Both of them. He was done giving up. He was going to be brave, fearless, just like his mother and father had been. 

When he slipped away into the comforting arms of the Force, his body fading out of view as he finally joined the thing that had been at his side since the day he was born. For the first few moments after he opened his eyes it was nothing but darkness. A heart stopping moment went by where he thought that this was all it was, an empty void. But then lights started showing around him. He felt the presences of others swarming around him to welcome him to greet him in the force. The first person he saw was his Father. Rushing to see him and stopping close enough for Luke to reach for but far enough that he wasn’t crowding him.

“Luke?”

He felt childish at the tears that pooled in his eyes again. The fear he suddenly felt at what would happen after he said what he needed to. 

“I just wanted you to be proud of me.”

“Oh son…”

Anakin moved forward as soon as the words were out of Luke’s mouth. Wrapping his son into a hug and Luke realized he could actually feel his father’s grip. He could feel his warmth. He could finally, after all these years, hug his father. Both of them were crying. Neither one of them were able to stop the tears that ran down their faces. Neither of them wanted to either. They just took solace in the others' presence, in being able to finally interact with each other in a real way since his father’s death. 

“I am proud of you..I’m so proud of you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I really hope you enjoyed! Let me know what you think in the comments!!!


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